Is Language Special? Anticipation Timing Accuracy of End of Turns in Known and Unknown Languages

Abstract

Structured signaling in the acoustic environment between two individuals usually leads to turns to avoid interference. Turn-taking in human communication is a precise system that enables interlocutors to interact very efficiently. Previous studies have detected criteria that allow for optimized timing within a conversation. For instance, lexico-syntax seems to be of outstanding relevance. Other aspects still under consideration in this context are prosody and rhythm beside others. In the current study, we focused on the question if language carries universal acoustic features which might make turn-taking in human communication uniquely efficient in contrast to e.g. 'turn-taking' in animals. We aimed at getting an impression of how language specific properties other than content and grammatical structure affect anticipation performance. Therefore, we contrasted the Anticipation Timing Accuracy (ATA) for mother-tongue stimuli in German, for items in six foreign languages (English, Italian, Polish, Turkish, Arabic, and Korean) and for simple sinusoidal tones. Results showed significant differences between the ATA of the foreign language stimuli. German subjects anticipated the ends of utterances in Indo-European languages and in stress-timed languages (German, English, Arabic) significantly better than the ends of items in non-Indo-European languages and in syllable-timed languages (Italian, Polish, Turkish, Korean, restrictions apply). We conclude that interlocutors' end-of-utterance anticipation performance is influenced by language inherent universal acoustic features.